Unite's decision to go nuclear, with 20 days of strikes, will cost BA up to £150m, wiping out three quarters of the airline's projected annual profit for 2010/11 in one fell swoop. That may be a price too high for shareholders, but so far, a conspicuously quiet Walsh seems to be mulling over his options. In sharp contrast to his handling of the December and March strikes, he has neither rushed into legal action, nor taken BA's latest deal off the table. It seems Nick Clegg is not the only man with an impossible decision to make.

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Benjamin Franklin had it right when he wrote in his autobiography that the best way to win an argument is to adopt an air of "modest diffidence". This approach works not only because it arouses respect among your detractors – who, though unlikely to be immediately won over, will at least lend you a sympathetic ear – but more crucially because of the effect it has on the workings of your inner mind. Men who question their own logic will find it less often being corrected by others.

Such a presumed air of papal infallibility is something the BA chief executive, Willie Walsh, should be forgiven for having allowed to creep up on him. The airline boss has dealt a series of decisive blows to Unite in his dispute with the union over cost cutting, and along the way has succeeded in rousing near-universal support among the public, politicians and the media. Though not the most charismatic of speakers, his uncompromising stance clearly struck a chord with many in these austere times.

But that makes it all the more frustrating that, having come so far, Walsh appears to be losing sight of his original objectives, and in the process driving BA towards a perilous and entirely avoidable escalation of tensions. Unlike in March, when the industry categorically threw its weight behind the management, this new strike threat has little to do with the flag carrier's financial plight.

Though BA is still on track to post record losses of up to £800m this year, it has in recent weeks made significant headway with cabin crew over the need for deep cuts. Understandings have been reached over pay freezes, staffing levels and the introduction of a new fleet – even prompting the Unite boss, Tony Woodley, to intimate last month that the "issues of substance" had been resolved.

And yet still the travelling public faces a summer of strikes. The first reason for this is that Walsh, a man whom I have never before accused of machismo, is refusing to fully reinstate travel perks for crew who took part in the previous walkouts. These perks cost BA next to nothing, giving staff 90% discounts on fares plus free upgrades, but only on a standby basis. Whenever a paying customer is available to take the seat, the employee finds himself offloaded. The second vestigial stumbling block is disciplinary action against 55 strikers. Though we cannot speculate on the merits of these cases, by dint of them being held in private, I find it hard to see why they have taken so long to conclude.

"Normally, the sort of issues we are referring to here – the removal of sanctions imposed during a strike, the speedy and sensitive winding down of all but the most genuinely serious disciplinary issues arising from a dispute – are straightforward matters of industrial common sense," Woodley said recently. In the 14 months this row has dragged on, I have never heard him sound so reasonable.

When I backed BA during the previous round of strikes, I did so with the knowledge weighing heavy on my mind that airlines lost £6bn last year. Dozens have collapsed since the start of the global recession – notably including Japan Airlines, one of BA's own oneworld alliance partners – and the unstoppable rise of low-cost carriers continues to undermine the viability of historic-legacy business models. Those models were inherited from an era when nationalised airlines cared little about making money, and air travel was more a romantic extravagance than a perfunctory sideeffect of globalisation. Legacy carriers, and in particular their long-spoilt cabin crew, had been in dire need of a wake-up call, and Walsh was primed to delve it out.

I backed BA because I was conscious of the grim financial climate the airline found itself in. And that alone. Not because I wanted to spare Walsh the moderate embarrassment of climbing down over a threat he made at the height of the tensions – least of all one which he has already partially reneged on. Fortnight after fortnight the airline boss growled in his internal newsletter that perks would not be reinstated once they had been axed. But he changed his mind. The basic level of discounts have already been restored for striking crew, and it is only the seniority privileges – which entitle long-serving employees the right to Club upgrades – that petulantly remain the issue of contention.

With a peace deal seemingly so close, one possible reason for this obstinacy is that Walsh harbours a secret desire to de-unionise his workforce. That was the theory put forward by Gregor Gall in his recent Comment is free piece, while other cynics have noted that BA can legally dismiss employees 12 weeks after the first round of stoppages, giving an apparent incentive for a protracted dispute. But it is not a view I am yet willing to subscribe to. Routing the majority of BA's cabin crew, ground staff and pilots at such an uncertain time is a task too Herculean even for Walsh.

The more plausible reality is that he, like Woodley in the earlier stages of this dispute, has fallen foul of Franklin's words. He's allowed self-assuredness and intransigence to cloud his judgment, coaxing himself into the belief that anything short of the humiliation of one's opponents signals failure. Mr Walsh: calm down. Things are not so desperate. Cabin crew have resigned themselves to the need for change, and Unite is poised to recommend the financial conditions of your latest offer. Don't throw it all away. Give crew back their privileges, and either wrap up the disciplinaries or get an adjudicator to do this for you. It is only BA's coffers and the flying public that will be hurt if you do not.

Travel perks were always an obvious bargaining chip for brokering a final settlement. Walsh needs to swallow his pride and play that hand now, instead of goading staff into needless walkouts.

None of this, of course, should be read as a defence of Unite. The union is firmly in a bed of its own making, and in future would be well advised to pick its fights more carefully. When even the incumbent political party you've bankrolled for decades won't support you, it's a fair bet you're on the wrong side of reason. But Unite, at least, has begun making overtures towards peace. It's time for BA to do the same.